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Headlines declare (12/2/96): Ice patches seen on Earth's moon

Radar images of the Moon's surface taken by American Defense Departments's
Clementine lunar probe have pointed to the possibility of finding water on
the Moon. The images of the Moon's south pole region show a patch of
ice
about 16 feet thick and roughly the size of four football fields.

"People had speculated since the early 1960s that ice might collect in the
permanent shadow of the Moon," said Dr Stewart Nozette, an astrophysicist at the
Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and head of science team on the Clementine
spacecraft
program. "We realized that we could use the spacecraft's communications
antenna to shine like a flashlight into the lunar south pole. Ice reflects radar
waves differently from rock, bouncing it around inside the frozen water
molecules
before it emerges."

One theory suggests that the source of ice was a comet which hit the Moon's
surface
some 3.6 billion years ago. Water from the icy comet was collected in the bottom
of
the crater where temperatures fall as low as -230 C. Because moon has no atmosphere,
comets which are nine tenths water, do not burn up as they approach its surface.
Upon
impact with the Moon's surface, gaseous matter from comets hangs around as a
cloud. Water
molecules from this cloud get trapped in extreme cold regions, finally
depositing as
ice. The scientist now theorize that vapor from comet impacts drifted towards
the pole
where it got trapped in extreme cold and turned into ice.

The possibility of finding water on the Moon's surface has stirred speculations
that by
2046
humans may be able to colonize the Moon or set up a lunar rocket refueling
station. Using
electric power provided by solar panels on the crater's sunlit rim, mined
ice could be split into
hydrogen and oxygen to provide rocket fuel, or to make your own air.

"This may be the most valuable piece of real state in the solar system," said
Paul Spudis, one
of the scientists who made the discovery.

If the Moon could be used as an interplanetary filling
station, it would reduce the cost of transport to and from it by a factor of 10.
It would make space exploration easier by relieving the problem of limited fuel
and food which is one of the major obstacles in today's space missions.

The discovery was made two years ago (~1994), but was hushed until now as the data were
being
analyzed. The
evidence of water was collected by a satellite designed to test
technology for
tracking and intercepting hostile missiles. The Clementine mission used the Moon
as a mock target to test missile sensor equipment, but during its two-month
lunar orbit it collected 1.8 million images of over 99.9 per cent of the Moon's
surface. Six visits to the equatorial region of the Moon by Apollo spacecraft turned up
no trace of water. Twelve astronauts, all from the U.S., have walked on the
surface of
the moon, which is about 239,000 miles from the Earth.

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